Fully paid Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will work alongside unpaid TSA agents at airports around the country starting Monday to ease congestion at security checkpoints. Tom Homan, the White House’s border security czar, confirmed the decision on the Sunday political show circuit saying the ICE agents, who have no training in airport security duties, will do support jobs that will free up the trained TSA agents to do the actual screening and operate the machinery. “I don’t see an ICE agent looking at an X-ray machine because they’re not trained in that,” Homan told CNN. “There are certain parts of security that TSA is doing that we can move them off those jobs and put them in the specialized jobs, help move those lines.”
However, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had a slightly different view of the ICE deployment. “They know how to run the X-ray machines because they are again under Homeland Security with TSA,” Duffy told ABC Sunday. Wherever the ICE agents end up working, Duffy said it’s likely there will be fewer TSA agents to work with as the partial government shutdown enters its fifth week with no end in sight. “I think you’re going to see more TSA agents—as we come to Thursday, Friday, Saturday of next week—they’re going to quit or they’re not going to show up,” Duffy said. That would coincide with them missing their second paycheck in a row. At least 300 TSA agents have quit and thousands more have called in sick since the shutdown began Feb. 14
Can’t see the unpaid TSA workers putting up with having to work alongside untrained, paid ICE workers for long….
There are plenty of TSA jobs that ICE is trained for and very capable of doing. That will leave more specially trained TSA workers to do their specialties.
Sure there are…..
https://apnews.com/article/ice-immigration-enforcement-congress-training-trump-466a19105e6dfd4990a9b58361b6963d
AP, don’t need to read any farther.
You wouldn’t be able to anyway.
But it’s your prerogative to not read any further.
How ’bout sharing your list of TSA jobs that ICE is trained for and very capable of doing? There’s real world power in knowing you have the facts instead of mere talking points, right?
Most of the more recently hired ICE agents aren’t even properly trained for their OWN jobs, let alone TSA.
LW falsehood talking points. Pay attention to the real world and hopefully one of your loved ones will not be the next victim of a criminal illegal before ICE can remove them. I will always have a cracked vertebrae in my neck from a head-on with an uninsured drunk illegal that crossed the center line. Thank God for seatbelts and airbags.
Bill –
Your vertebrae would be cracked exactly the same if the drunk driver were a white US woman. You can be upset that you were injured by a thoughtless, reckless human being; but a crime is a crime – someone’s citizenship neither increases nor decreases the severity or outcome.
This will be entertaining to watch. With lowered hiring standards, abbreviated training in the field they were hired for, and incompetent leadership, ICE employees might find this new role a challenge.
So, wearing camo or uniforms, masks or no masks, names or no names, pepper spray or no, armed to the teeth or no? so many questions.
It has been often said that the TSA agents that do the security screening (commonly derided as “theatre”) aren’t exactly the best trained in common sense.
Judging by many claims of late, those TSA agents seem to have much more training than the latest batch of ICE agents. I’m expecting it to be quite amusing (and for the travelers, frustrating) to watch these people work the airport security screening…
Front-line TSA employees are not armed. So strip ICE agents of their weapons, body armor, masks, and if at all possible, their uber-macho attitude, and let them help with crowd control to free up the unpaid TSA workers.
Let us know how you really feel.
Yep, the law enforcement profession disproportionately attracts thugs. Please elaborate as to how cops are more thuggish than your Antifa/BLM brethren that your side supports. Before responding with your classic “whataboutism” reply, please look up the definition of hypocrisy. You’re also free to sell your expensive flying toys and give the proceeds to your favorite immigrant family.
What we have here is a totally incompetent US government.
There are plenty of well-meaning, hard-working employees in the US Gov’t. Air Traffic Controllers, USDA inspectors, CDC doctors & researchers, etc… But when they just do their job, no one writes headlines about them. You only hear about the occasional screwups *because* they are out-of-the-ordinary and make for eye-catching headlines (or political screeds). However, anyone who’s worked in Corporate America knows there are *plenty* of screwups there, too – its not unique to government!
Sure, there are parts of our Gov’t that need reform. There are functions that can be improved. There are people who should be relieved of their duties. But smearing all ~3 million people who work for the US Gov’t doesn’t help. Simply criticizing or tearing stuff down doesn’t improve it. Improvement takes focused effort – something that, sadly, many citizens don’t want to do and *certainly* something that politicians aren’t incentivized to do given the media, monetary, and electoral systems currently in-place.
You are absolutely correct, of course. My comment was directed at the politicians.
We are with the government and we’re here to help. 😉
I ain’t flying NOWHERE!
I assume you elided, “in someone else’s airplane, with anyone else at the controls.”
I’m in Phoenix for work this week, flying home in a few days. Local news announced this morning that ICE agents were at Sky Harbor helping TSA. When I get home I’ll let you know how much help they were getting me onto my flight home on time. I’ll compare it with my experience at PHX last month when it took 40 minutes to get through the Pre-Check line. But I’m thinking that to be absolutely sure I make my flight, I should probably show up three hours early.
It’s a good idea and I’m sure it will help. The TSA employees are not performing brain surgery.
It is disappointing to see so many leftist and socialist following this story. I am grateful of the brave men and women of ICE stepping up to protect the US from the invasion caused by the previous administration.
TSA is airport security. ICE is immigration enforcement. When the public starts seeing both in the same terminal, fear and confusion are not overreaction. They are a predictable response to a government that is patching a staffing failure with the wrong image.
That’ll do folks. No degenerating into partisan politics here. If you have something to say about this deployment and its impact on aviation, go for it but we’re not going to tackle immigration enforcement with broad (and nasty) strokes here. Please behave.